“No, it is not, sir; go back and fetch Heavystern immediately, or by the powers but I will”--“Massa Sergeant, you must be mad--Dr Plaget--you won’t yeerie--but him say, five grenadier--especially wid Corporal Bumblechop for one--is good load--ay, wery tif load--equal to seven tallion company [battallion, I presume], and more better load, great deal, den six light infantry--beside him say, tell Sergeant Pivot to send you back at five in de afternoon wid four more coffin, by which time he would have anoder load, and in trute de load was ready prepare in de deadhouse before I come away, only dem were not well cold just yet.” I was mightily shocked at all this--but my chum took it very coolly.--He slightly raised one side of his mouth, and, giving a knowing wink with his eye, lighted a fresh cigar, and continued to puff away with all the composure in the world. At length the forenoon wore away, and the bugles sounded for dinner, when we adjourned to the messroom. It was a very large and handsome saloon, standing alone in the lawn, and quite detached from all the other buildings, but the curtailed dimensions of the table in the middle of it, and the ominous crowding together of the regimental plate, like a show-table in Rundle and Bridge’s back shop, gave startling proofs of the ravages of the “pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday;” for although the whole regiment was in barracks, there were only nine covers laid, one of which was for me. The lieutenant-colonel, the major, and, I believe, fifteen other officers, had already been gathered to their fathers, within four months from the day on which the regiment landed from the transports. Their warfare was o’er, and they slept well. At the first, when the insidious disease began to creep on apace, and to evince its deadly virulence, all was dismay and anxiety--downright, slavish, unmanly fear, even amongst casehardened veterans, who had weathered the whole Peninsular war, and finished off with Waterloo. The next week passed over--the mortality increasing, but the dismay decreasing and so it wore on, until it reached its horrible climax, at the time I speak of, by which period there was absolutely no dread at all. A reckless gaiety had succeeded not the screwing up of one’s courage for the nonce, to mount a breach, or to lay an enemy’s frigate aboard, where the substratum of fear is present, although cased over by an energetic exertion of the will; but an unnatural light-heartedness, for which account, ye philosophers, for I cannot--and this, too, amongst men who, although as steel in the field, yet whenever a common cold overtook them in quarters, or a small twinge of rheumatic pain, would, under other circumstances, have caudled and beflannelled themselves, and bored you for your sympathy, at no allowance, as they say.